Mississippi convict wrongly freed, at large

July 29, 2009

Cook County Sheriff's police are searching for a Mississippi man who was mistakenly freed from Cook County Jail even though he is currently serving a 30-year sentence for manslaughter in the southern state.

Authorities said Jonathan Cooper, 28, formerly of Lansing, Ill., was brought to the Chicago area on July 23 to face charges that he failed to register as a sex offender following a 1999 conviction in Illinois for predatory criminal sexual assault.

But on Monday, prosecutors dropped the charges since Cooper would be unable to comply with the sex offender registration act due to his incarceration in Mississippi, said Andy Conklin, a spokesman for the Cook County State's Attorney's office.

Cooper's release from the county jail occurred when a clerk there failed to include information about his Mississippi sentence in his case file, said Sheriff's Department spokesman Steve Patterson. When the Cook County case was dropped, jail personnel saw nothing in the file requiring that he be transported back to Mississippi, he said. He was released late Monday.

Jail officials discovered the mistake Wednesday and began their search for Cooper.

The office is conducting an internal investigation into the circumstances surrounding his release, including interviewing the clerk who handled Cooper's paperwork, Patterson said.

"At this point, it doesn't appear to be anything sinister, but it does appear that paperwork was handled inappropriately," he said.

Patterson said investigators don't consider Cooper armed or dangerous at the moment. It is unclear whether he is aware that his release was a mistake, he said.

According to court records, Cooper was convicted in Mississippi of the May 25, 2002, beating death of a man with an aluminum baseball bat after the man assaulted him at his cousin's house during an early-morning argument.

In a 2005 appeal, Cooper claimed he was acting in self-defense, but the state court of appeals upheld his conviction because it believed he "acted unreasonably" in hitting the victim twice in the head after he did not pose a danger to him.